Referral Criteria for Special Education: General Education Teachers’ Perspectives in Canada and the United States of America

Abstract

General education classroom teachers initiate the referral process of students who later become identified with a disability. With recent changes in educational assessment and programming (i.e., Response to Intervention [RTI] within the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA] [2004] and Canadian legislation, such as Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability [EQAO] Office Act [1996]), this study examined the psychometric properties of referral criteria used by teachers when referring students for special education services. The sample (N=97) consisted of Canadian and American general education classroom teachers from rural, suburban, and inner-city school districts. Exploratory factor analysis identified that the 15 referral criteria can be reduced into two subscales, inattention and aptitude, and, collectively, they accounted for 50% of the common variance in teachers’ ratings of referral criteria. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.